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It visualizes and maps this deserted yet scientifically well-documented continent resulting in a virtual scenario that is, however, neither abstract nor illusionistic.[33] «Dialogue with the Knowbotic South» processes the data received via the networks and visualizes it on large projection screens in a darkened room as changing starbursts, which can be activated by software agents called «knowbots.» Here the visitor does not experience immersion in an illusionary Antarctic landscape but, instead, in an image space filled with abstract scientific data, a space of permanent metamorphosis, which is the intention of the artists. «Dialogue with the Knowbotic South» enables the observers to actively witness how science models and simulates Antarctica, a continent not fully explored, with extreme climatic conditions and little history of civilization, into an artificial construct, into computer-aided nature.[34] Knowbotic Research's concept raises doubts about the hope of science to achieve a representation of nature in its entirety and, with their artistic deconstruction, they highlight the ideological dimension of images in science that seek to represent what is seen as it is intended it should be seen.[35]

Interactive theater

In plays, novels or artworks we often encounter a conflict situation, a caesura, or an ambivalent moment that, when concentrated within one character, serves to endow the plot with overwhelming suspense until, finally, the conflict is resolved in some way, for example by a tragic «dénouement.»

A remarkable example of a new kind of combination of digital art and theater, of life and art, or, technically speaking, of a complex software interface is the installation «Ultima Ratio» (1998) by Daniela Alina Plewe[36]. Her interactive installation pursues an ambitious goal: to develop a visual language equivalent to what takes place in theater, which reflects the logic and inner arguments of the protagonists that precede the action. «Ultima Ratio's» basic aesthetic experience is conflict. Once involved in its ambivalence the visitor must actively and creatively make a decision. On closer analysis, however, the iconic argumentation is revealed as being still at a rudimentary stage of development: the arguments appear as fragile and abstract spatial bodies, which represent their conditions, conclusions and internal dynamics. Notwithstanding, Plewe's «Ultima Ratio» offers a first

[34] The artists received access to data collected by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven; Norway, New Zealand, and Russia also provided data. However, they were unable to get satellite data less than two weeks old. The only online data was provided by Germany.